One of the last things the Linux kernel does during system boot is mount the root filesystem. The Linux kernel dictates no filesystem structure, but user space applications expect to find files with ...

We have looked at the fuser command before to display information about what users or processes are keeping file systems busy. This command can save you a lot of time tracking when you need to quickly ...

In the realm of modern data management, few technologies hold as much promise and versatility as the ZFS file system. Originally developed by Sun Microsystems for their Solaris operating system, ZFS ...

GUIs are great—we wouldn’t want to live without them. But if you’re a Mac or Linux user and you want to get the most out of your operating system (and your keystrokes), you owe it to yourself to get ...

Every month or two, someone asks me how they should go about learning Unix. The short answer is always “use it” or maybe as much as “use it — a lot.” But the detailed answer includes a lot of steps ...

One of the difficulties of switching from one OS to the other is trying to locate all the system files and keep track of where the new OS stores all its settings. The image above, which you can also ...

In my first post on this subject, Btrfs basics, I discussed how to create a simple btrfs filesystem, or a complete btrfs Linux system. The information and examples in that post are going to be ...

File sharing is a fundamental aspect of networked computing, and in Linux environments, two of the most prevalent protocols facilitating this are NFS (Network File System) and Samba. This article aims ...

Many people have read that post by Linus Torvalds in the comp.os.minix newsgroup on Usenet, or at least heard about it. Many more are aware of how that (free) operating system ended up taking over ...